“OK, you’ve started up, now how do you scale up?” “How do your plans go to scale?” I hear questions like this a lot. Scalability is a good question for anyone starting up something new—like The Beatitudes Society. The questions are really asking, “How do you expand your capacity to serve more people?” It’s a question about economics and impact and sustainability. And it’s a question about faith—faith like that mustard seed that Jesus talked about. In Luke’s story about... Read more

CANA(Convening, Advocating, Networking, and Acting) has a group of five major initiatives to spearhead in the next year. These first five areas can be viewed as a bit of the origin story of CANA over the last nine months, but were clearly defined by participants at the CANA kick off meeting in November 2013 at the Washington Cathedral. The fifth initiative is: Common Good Initiative Goals: Engage in serious dialog and action toward finding new ways for churches and christians... Read more

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten acquainted with a movement of Christians that is vibrant, enormous, and yet refuses to let itself be named or to take credit for any of its accomplishments. Some have named subsets or aspects of the movement — for example, “The New Monastics,” “The Emergent Church,” “Ordinary Radicals,” and even “Revolutionaries.” But there are millions of people swept up into this movement who have never even heard those phrases. I grew up an atheist... Read more

And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (Mat 13:52 NRS) I’m a scribe. In modern lingo, I’m a New Testament scholar who teaches seminary students. I’m also a disciple of Jesus Christ trying my best to honor treasures both old and new. I teach and learn with students who are... Read more

As excitement and hope continue to grow about our efforts at creating a convergence of people who are committed to Convening, Advocating, Networking for Action amongst the Generous, Liberative Christianity Movement there are many exciting things happening on the world of Cana. Think of the Cana Initiative as a Verb. Rather than thinking of the Cana Initiative primarily as an organization the suggestion was made to frame our efforts as a verb – as in “to Cana something”. To Cana... Read more

It took us a few weeks to coordinate our schedules, but when we finally connected, we decided to meet at the funky, hipster coffee shop on the edge of downtown Denver that lies halfway between the churches that we each serve. Rob is the pastor at a new church plant in the neighborhood where I serve a mainline, 124 year-old congregation.  At first glance we couldn’t be serving more different communities. Rob is serving a non-denominational Evangelical church that meets... Read more

A Lenten Meditation: In the midst of the liminal, or What do a hawk, pigeon, and goose have to teach us? We have a visitor at our church. She stops by from time to time. But often she’s only around for a fleeting moment, just long enough to keep an eye on things. She perches atop our steeple, carefully balancing up on the cross, ever vigilant but always wary. She’s a red-tailed hawk, full of powerful grace and scary beauty.... Read more

CANA(Convening, Advocating, Networking, and Acting) has a group of four major initiatives to spearhead in the next year. These first four areas can be viewed as a bit of the origin story of CANA over the last nine months, but were clearly defined by participants at the CANA kick off meeting in November 2013 at the Washington Cathedral. The fourth initiative is the: Generous Christianity Ethos Initiative Goals     Encourage new, expanding, generative and meaningful expressions of Christian faith in... Read more

Everyone Belongs Imagine a world where everyone belongs.  Where we don’t demonize people who think differently than us. Where we don’t think we’re better than anyone else. Where there is no “us and them.”  There’s just “We.” Where we are one human family. Where there are no labels except “beloved” and “Child of God.” Where we live together in the same neighborhood despite racial and economic differences. Where there are no prisons or walls to divide us. Where we share... Read more